Welcome to the Alfred Wilsey Library!

Home to a wonderful collection of books, magazines, newspapers, and online resources

Library Information

We empower learners. To this end, we teach research and informational literacy, guide access to ideas and resources, and encourage critical thinking. The library faculty and physical environment nurture reading for pleasure and purpose, as well as collaborative and individual study and practice. We respond to sociocultural needs, innovate in response to and ahead of our changing culture, and provide excellent service to the entire St. Ignatius community.

Databases: We subscribe to wide variety of general and subject specific databases to help support the students, staff, and faculty.The databases are avaliable to students 24/7 through the Research Database page.

Faculty

Albert Einstein signed a letter, along with other scientists, to President Franklin Roosevelt, warning that the construction of an atomic bomb using uranium was indeed possible, and advised the U.S. Government to invest time and money into its research. The letter hinted that physicists in Nazi Germany had already begun similar work. As a result of the letter, Roosevelt created the Briggs Advisory Committee. This slowly evolved to become the Manhattan Project, an enormous project that later developed the Little Boy and Fat Man bombs. These were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, killing over 200,000 people.

Einstein later described signing the letter as the "one great mistake in my life."

From: Letters of Note, a blog/archive that is home to thousands of fascinating pieces of correspondence.